Google is seeking your help with improving Google Voice

It seems that Google is either trying to gauge the usefulness of Google Voice, or trying to decide whether GV is expendable. Today, Google is luring Google Voice users to complete a simple survey by offering users an entry into a raffle for a free Chromecast.

The survey is more than likely just to see what they can improve upon, which is really cool to see from such a large company. Head on over to the survey via the link below, let Google know your thoughts on Google Voice and enter for a chance to win a free Chromecast.

The survey will close Wednesday June 17th, so hurry on over to the survey and fill it out. In order to win a Chromecast
from Google, you must be at least 18 years of age, and live in the United States. While you’re at it, let us know what you think about Google Voice, and how you use it in your day to day life.

I'm a lover of all things technology related, with an iPhone 6. I also have a Nexus 7 (2012), MacBook Pro, and Samsung Series 5 laptop. For gaming, an Xbox 360. I love finding new apps, icons, wallpapers, and widgets, and I love trying out new stuff. Feel free to contact me at any point in time for any reason.
I'm the Associate Editor of TechDissected.

Several things that would make the whole voice/hangouts ecosystem much better:

– (1) They need to get rid of the current blue icon voice app and integrate its little remaining functionality into the hangouts app: Give the user the option to toggle between VoIP (hangouts caller app) and regular phone call (i.e. what the current blue icon voice app does now) based on signal/WiFi coverage and at the users discretion.
– (2) Integrate call histories across devices: right now calls made through the hangouts system (on the app or computer browser) show up on your voice history, but oddly not the other way around. This is just weird and provides a conflicting user experience.
– (3) While they’re at it, clean up the Hangouts app. It is sluggish and battery draining. It also makes no sense that you can only merge 1 gmail with voice/sms conversations per contact. There are many people with 2 or more possible hangouts conversations – voice number sms, private gmail hangout, work email (google enterprise) hangouts, sim number sms, etc. There is no reason why you can’t merge more than 2 conversations for each contact. They should also implement merged hangouts/voice sms conversations on the hangouts computer environments: in the browser gmail, chrome extension, etc. This would bring a much more cohesive and consistent user experience, since right now, this merging of conversations is just a front end on the phone app, so not really merging at all.
– (4) While I don’t use my sim number for any communication at this point, I imagine this might be useful for some people too: basically, integrate what mightytext and other similar apps do into the hangouts/voice environment. This would be the definitive texting/messaging ecosystem – although like I said, this is not that important if you iron out all the other things mentioned above.

I’m sure there’s other things they could do to improve the service – which, although not perfect, is still INCREDIBLY useful!